Temitope Fabunmi talks to drama society members, Amber Hine and Jess Neale:
Talk to us briefly about ‘The Winter’sTale.’ Is it a comedy (as
Shakespeare claimed) or a romance with a twist as contemporaries have?
Amber Hine: I recently wrote an essay on the genre of ‘The Winter’s
Tale.’ As one of Shakespeare’s later plays, it seems to be a
conglomeration of many genres.
Jess Neale: Yeah, I would probably call it a problem play. Because the
first part is incredibly dark and the second half is incredibly comic.
AH: The title itself is indicative of a wife’s tale, a pastoral tale,
so some might call it a pastoral play where there is a lesson to be
learnt. The second title of the play is the triumph of time where the
lesson of the play is to learn the great feats that can be achieve
through time and the passage of time.
JN: It’s quite fun within the play to have people dying and have
children dying and then in the next scene having three characters
having…a threesome. It’s a good mix which I quite enjoy.
JN: Lazily by a lot of people who haven’t considered the full
implications of the play have considered it a tragicomedy which I
don’t think is fair. I think there’s far too much content and
diversity in the play.
Sam Mendes previously directed a production of ‘The Winter’s Tale’
performed at The Old Vic. Have you seen the play in performance or any
other Shakespearian productions done professionally? If so, will these
influence your direction?
AH: Yes, I’ve seen the ‘Twelfth Night’ at the Propeller Company that
had a chorus in it and for our Winter’s Tale we have a chorus that
stay on almost throughout the whole play. Using the chorus to reflect
upon the action on the stage (especially when the audience don’t know
the play so well) helps to engage them with the action.
JN: I’ve seen and been in far too many Shakespeare plays ever since I
was a child. My family used to go and see Shakespeare plays three or
four times a year. I’ve been involved in a company called Theatres of
the Dales based in Leeds who put on a Shakespeare play every summer,
often outside in the ruins of castles and through school experience
and University, I’ve directed some Shakespeare plays. Shakespeare has
been in my life since I was a wee baby and I love him.
Have you modernised the play in any way? Will you be conforming to
Shakespearian tradition of tying up all loose ends in the play’s
conclusion or should we expect an ambiguous ending?
AH: Well, I have an interest in something called digital
scenonography and so that will be incorporated into the design of the
play but we have set it timelessly.
JN: We didn’t want to completely modernise it and we also didn’t want
to set it in the Elizabethan Shakespeare tradition. Because there are
two completely different places in the play and because there’s a
massive time gap, we thought it’d be best to leave it as timeless.
AH: I think the audience will associate better with it when the action
on the stage isn’t traditional Shakespeare. Particularly when it’s not
so well known.
JN: I have a particular love of Shakespeare form, but I don’t always
agree with the way it should be delivered. So even though characters
say quite complicated things, I think they should say it in a more
modern way.
AH: With regards to the ending of the play, the script itself doesn’t
have an all happy ending. Although characters are reunited, there is a
lot of work to be done between them before they can reach their
proverbial happy ending which is not in the script as the final ending
although it is suggested.
JN: It’s a very sudden ending. Literally within the last scene which
is a couple of pages before the end, a character suddenly comes back
to life and two characters who don’t even speak to each other in the
play get married off. So there is a sense that the “happy ending” is a
bit thrown together but I think that adds to the idea that maybe it
isn’t a happy ending.
AH: The moment we have at the end is a euphoric ending where
everything seems like a happy ending, but you look back and realise
there’s still a lot of work to be done.
As co-directors, have your viewpoints on the overall message of the
play clashed, affecting its production?
JN: As a generalisation I’d say no, there have not been that many
clashes. We’ve both got similar ideas about how the play should be
presented and what the main themes are. Obviously there have been
slight clashes, but we’ve reached a compromise.
AH: What we did when we applied to be directors is we sat down
together, talked about the meaning and what we take from the play and
also how we should approach the rehearsal process. For example, Jess
has a greater knowledge of comedy work, so she took the head on the
comedy scene rehearsals and I took the head on the less comedic and
then we came together and reviewed them.
JN: It’s difficult with ‘The Winter’s Tale.’ There’s not much cutting
you can do within the play. You’ve got to present it in its full
length so it’s useful to have two of us so we can do simultaneous
directing for different scenes at the same time.
AH: I think it’s also very good to have another set of eyes in what
you’re doing because then you don’t become too arrogant. You don’t
miss things and I think that really benefits the play and the whole
process because we are quite young. There’s some humility in having
someone else in the rehearsals.
The ‘split’ in the play is a very important structural element. Are
you worried about the transition appearing broken and lacking skill?
JN: I think the main worry is that the split happens with the interval
in between. So the first half is incredibly dark and the audience
comes back to reflect on that, then suddenly they come back to it
being incredibly light-hearted and fun.
AH: One thing that helps to initiate that split before the interval is
the introduction of the comedic characters which already begins the
transition for the audience before the interval to a different mind
frame. Then there’s also the character of Time which helps the
audience and guides them through this idea of the fifteen years that
have gone by.
JN: Hopefully, the comedic elements will provide a kind of nice break
from the intensity because the comedic side has entirely different
characters. It’s almost like an advert break where the audience can
relax and have a laugh before they go back to the dramatic intensity.
The Drama Department, The Drama Society and The Hull Truck Theatre all
have works of Shakespeare as their next main house productions. Why do
you think, so many years on, we are still so fascinated?
JN: Because he’s amazing. Amber?
AH: He’s a seminal writer in English history for which we have a great
national pride. Using his plays that cover such a diverse range of
content, ideals and characters reflect our society today and I think
always will.
JN: It’s been said that there’s only several plots and every story is
a kind of mixture of those. ‘The Lion King’ is ‘Hamlet’ and
Shakespeare is continuously creeping into modern culture often without
people even realising.
AH: You read a book or you watch a film and you go “that’s Othello.
That’s King Lear.” With his diverse range he’s never going to die out
of relevance and the national pride that we have for him (being forced
to study him in some cases) only makes him relevant to everyone and
anyone.
JN: He’s OUR Shakespeare!
Temitope Fabunmi
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